Butterfly: Let's Talk

Paying attention to your appearance is a very human trait. And though we talk about accepting our bodies and learning to love them, most of us still think about our image a lot.    We're not the only species that groom,” says researcher and clinical psychologist Deb Mitchison. “Most species are interested in how they look so it's not a drive that I think we can expect to eliminate.” The problem is...

A few years ago, Isabella Davis impulsively took a photo of her body and posted it to her Instagram account. It was an act of defiance. She was sick of being told she wasn’t good enough, that she needed to go on a diet, or that she should aspire to a particular body shape or size. “My feed was just full of perfectly posed images, which are great, but it's just not my reality. And I was just like,...

It’s the most basic of questions and the one most often asked on the Butterfly Helpline: How do you know it’s an eating disorder?   “If you’re even considering that there might be an eating disorder going on,” says Dr. Simon Wilksch, senior eating disorders research fellow at Flinders University, “it’s likely there’s something happening that’s worth checking out.”   Why? The problem is that a key...

If a person experiences a mental health issue, most people know that their family is also affected in varying ways. In this podcast, we look at the impact of eating disorders on siblings – how they feel about their brother or sister’s eating disorder, how they feel about their sibling’s experience, what support they feel able to offer, and what support they may actually need for themselves. It’s a...

Before she was the CEO of Australia’s Mental Health Commission, Christine Morgan served for 10 years as CEO of Butterfly. And to mark Butterfly’s 20th anniversary, she sat down with Sam Ikin for an in-depth review of eating disorders in Australia. Their conversation included the state of awareness, research, diagnosis, and treatment options - first looking back to 2002 and then looking forward to...

To mark 20 years of service to all those affected by body image issues and eating disorders, our new podcast looks at the past, present and future of care. Sam talks to Claire Middleton, the desperate mum who started Butterfly from her kitchen table and in doing so changed hundreds of thousands of lives. He also talks to Shannon Calvert, who lived with an eating disorder for 30 years and has becom...

The teenage years can be fun and exciting but they’re also a period when we’re particularly vulnerable to body image concerns. Young people are developmentally inclined to compare themselves to others, but this developmental drive is intensified by external influences, including the constant presence of social media that showcases unrealistic body ideals. Dr Justin Coulson is one of Australia's mo...

The relationship between autism and eating disorders is not well known but it's surprisingly common. It's so common that some of Australia's top clinicians recommend everyone who lives with an eating disorder take an autism test. "Somewhere between 30 and 35 per cent of individuals with eating disorders may actually also be autistic, but it's likely to have not been diagnosed prior to the onset of...

Kai Schweizer, who identifies as gender diverse, first joined the Butterfly podcast in 2020 for the episode Gender, Sexuality and Eating Disorders. Our host Sam spent some time getting to know how Kai’s emerging gender identity at an all-girls secondary school led to disordered eating behaviours. He’s now a respected specialist in LGBTIQA+ issues, including this community’s experience of eating di...

It’s no secret we’ve been fed overly narrow beauty and body standards through advertising and the media for as long as both have been around. What’s less talked about are the consequences: Constant exposure to idealised bodies promotes body dissatisfaction, poor self-esteem and can trigger serious and life-threatening eating disorders. "We’ve grown up with it," says veteran of the magazine industr...

The content we consume online can have been found time and time again to be a huge driver of body image issues. According to extensive research young people are particularly at risk. Social media, in particular, is packed with unrealistic images and ideals. These platforms can be an incubator for mental illness - including eating disorders. This has been a growing problem for years and it's why th...

Negative body image can impact almost every aspect of your life, especially your sex life. And while fulfilling intimate relationships is a key component of general wellbeing, the shame hammered into us by societal messages about what bodies should look like is too often carried into the bedroom. It can seriously mess with our sexual experience. “Self-judgement and self-criticism make us feel low,...

Fat phobia is the fear and dislike of fat or larger bodies. It’s irrational, unjust, and often expressed in damaging ways. In fact, weight stigma is associated with several negative outcomes for people in larger bodies, including decreased opportunity in employment, income, education, housing, and medical care. The mental health impacts are also well documented: increased stress, anxiety, depressi...

Social media influencer Katie Parrott uses her online presence to normalise our view of larger bodies and to talk about fatphobia, mental health, public health, food, fashion, and anything else that comes to mind. Katie spent some time with our host, Sam Ikin, talking about her journey to body acceptance. It wasn’t always easy for Katie to shrug off the societal pressure to subscribe to the thin i...

Jack Symonds never considered himself to be much of a swimmer. In fact, before deciding to swim the English Channel to raise funds for Butterfly, it was probably twelve years since he swam a single lap in a pool. Jack is the sibling of a beloved sister who battled an eating disorder for close to ten years. “They say that people don’t get eating disorders, but families do”, he says. “And in my expe...

About a million Australians are going into this holiday season - which is often defined by feasting - struggling with an eating disorder. Many of those will be hiding in plain sight. They’ll be struggling but the people around them won’t have any idea because they don’t fit the stereotype. They don’t look the way people with eating disorders are supposed to look. It’s why experts say there are a s...

Dr Scott Griffiths is one of Australia’s top researchers in body image and eating disorders and a National Health and Medical Research Council Fellow at the University of Melbourne. He’s currently involved in an ongoing study into the male experience of eating disorders. In this In Depth episode, he challenges the myth that men are not impacted by either body image issues or eating disorders. Whil...

We know that treating an eating disorder can be complicated. But when you’re managing an eating disorder along with a co-occurring medical condition, that can add extra complexity. It’s quite common for eating disorders to co-exist with other health issues but it's often unclear whether eating behaviours are to appropriately mitigate symptoms or are a disordered response to distress. In this episo...

Psychiatrist Richard Newton is an adjunct professor at Monash University, the clinical director of a large mental health service (that also serves as a teaching hospital), and serves on the boards of Butterfly and Wandi Nerida, Butterfly’s residential treatment centre on the Sunshine Coast. In this episode, he talks with Sam Ikin about how mental health conditions, including eating disorders, ofte...

We live in a world where we’re constantly marketed cheap, addictive “food” with very little nutritional value, and we’ve all heard about the public health impacts of that. It’s a situation that’s led to a growing distrust of the food system and increased fear of food. It’s little wonder there’s rapidly growing interest in “healthy eating”, and it’s why the diet industry has begun to systematically...

Social media is a huge driver of body image issues and young people are particularly at risk. Packed with unrealistic images and ideals, social platforms can be an incubator for mental illness – including eating disorders. But the problem is worse than most people think according to Swinburne University researcher in applied social technology Dr Suku Sukunesan. Dr Sukunesan's research has been mak...

With so many developmental and even physical changes happening in their lives, teenagers are particularly vulnerable to body image issues. Spurred on by social media, they’re constantly comparing themselves to others. Having a positive body image can help teens to develop self-esteem, self-confidence, and to develop socially. It can lead to better mental and physical health later in life. The prob...

Mental health was one of the major underlying issues laid bare at the Tokyo Paralympics. While we all heard about high profile athletes and their struggles from a distance, Australian Swimmer Jessica Smith has lived through it. As a kid living with a disability, Jessica wanted to win gold for her country since she realised she could beat all the able-bodied swimmers at her school. It became more t...

It can take a lot of courage for someone living with an eating disorder to admit they need help. But all too often those who struggle are held back by a complex health system, a shortage of trained clinicians, GPs who don’t pick up on the warning signs, and the high cost of treatment. That’s over and above the ever-present myths that surround eating disorders. Imogen tells us how she couldn't find...

Nobody has had a more profound impact on the treatment of eating disorders than Carolyn Costin. We are excited to have her as the first guest for our Let’s Talk in Depth show, which will run mid-monthly to complement Butterfly: Let’s Talk. After recovering from Anorexia Nervosa in her early 20’s, Carolyn found her calling in helping others to recover. Her unique philosophy was so successful that s...